What is a God?: Studies in the Nature of Greek Divinity

189 Pages·2009·4.557 MB·English

by  Alan B. Lloyd

in recent study Greek religion has often dissolved itself into many religions. the eleven Lloyd
original essays here focus both on extremes of the Greek world and on its classical ed.
‘centre’. distinguished scholars examine the earliest traces of religious thought in the ..
Minoan and Mycenaean cultures. striking similarities are revealed between religious
ideas of Greece and of non-Greek asia. there are special studies of apollo, athena, and
dionysiac religion. and new patterns are identified in the archaic and classical thought
of heraclitus, herodotus and sophocles.
The editor
alan B. Lloyd is an internationally-recognised authority on the history of ancient
W
Greece and Egypt.
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The contributors a
Walter Burkert, Michael Clarke, susan deacy, Bernard dietrich, John K. davies,
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thomas harrison, anne-France Morand, Catherine osborne, Richard seaford, seth
L. schein, alexandra Villing i
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a

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Cover illustration
an attic red-figure lekythos by the achilles Painter, from Cyprus. aphrodite holding a sceptre o
rides on the back of a swan, c. 440 bc.
d
oxford, ashmolean 324. Reproduced courtesy of the Museum.
?
What is a God?
Studies in the Nature of
Greek Divinity
distributor:
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oxford oX1 2EW Edited by
The Classical Press of Wales distributor in the U.s.a.: The
alan B. Lloyd
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swansea Po Box 511, Press
sa1 6JN oakville, Ct 06779 of Wales
WHAT IS A GOD?
Studies in the nature of
Greek divinity
Editor
Alan B. Lloyd
Contributors
Walter Burkert, Michael Clarke, John K. Davies,
Susan Deacy, Bernard Dietrich, Thomas Harrison,
Anne-France Morand, Catherine Osborne,
Seth L. Schein, Richard Seaford, Alexandra Villing
The Classical Press of Wales
First published in hardback in 1997
Paperback edition 2009
The Classical Press of Wales
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© 2009 The contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN 978-1-910589-51-9
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
CONTENTS
Introductory note vii
1. From Knossos to Homer 1
Bernard Dietrich (University of Wales Aberystwyth)
2. From epiphany to cult statue 15
Walter Burkert (University of Zurich)
3. Heraclitus and the rites of established religion 35
Catherine Osborne (University of Wales Swansea)
4. The moral dimension of Pythian Apollo 43
J.K. Davies (University of Liverpool)
5. Gods and mountains in Greek myth and poetry 65
Michael Clarke (University of Manchester)
6. Aspects of Athena in the Greek polis: Sparta and Corinth 81
A.C. Villing (University of Oxford)
7. Herodotus and the certainty of divine retribution 101
Thomas Harrison (University of St Andrews)
8. Divinity and moral agency in Sophoclean tragedy 123
Seth L. Schein (University of California, Davis)
9. Thunder, lightning and earthquake in the Bacchae 139
and the Acts of the Apostles
Richard Seaford (University of Exeter)
10. Athena and the Amazons: mortal and immortal 153
femininity in Greek myth
Susan Deacy (University of Keele)
11. Orphic gods and other gods 169
Anne-France Morand (University of Geneva)
Index 183
v
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
This volume stems from a colloquium with the same title, held in July
1994 at Gregynog by the University of Wales Institute of Classics and
Ancient History – as its inaugural conference. The conference was
conceived and convened by Professor Alan Lloyd, and it was he who
secured the participation of selected conference members in the
present volume. In the production of the volume, Anton Powell acted
as reader and sub-editor, and also made the index. Editor and sub-
editor wish to record their continuing debt to the meticulous and
scholarly work of the Institute’s typesetter, Ernest Buckley.
The material in the volume has been arranged in chronological
order, as far as possible. In their respective papers, Dietrich and
Burkert treat the earliest evidence, Minoan, Mycenaean and Homeric.
Osborne reinterprets passages of Heraclitus and suggests a position
less hostile to traditional religion than has often been thought. Davies,
in examining Apollo, finds that the directing of human morality is very
far from the main element of the god’s persona; Schein argues that
Sophocles shows gods as guiding human decisions less often than do
other tragedians. Harrison finds in Herodotus a persistent, if not
wholly consistent, belief in divine retribution for human action. Clarke
shows that a scrupulous reading of Greek passages on mountains-as-
divinities reveals a literalism unfamiliar to modern thought but
paralleled in neighbouring non-Greek culture; Seaford examines
correspondences between classical and New Testament portrayal of
numinous events on earth. Morand shares with Seaford an interest in
Dionysus, but in Dionysus as part of the Orphic religion of Roman Asia
Minor. Villing and Deacy study Athena, each with a special concern for
aspects beyond Athens: Villing examines cults in the Peloponnese,
Deacy studies the connection with the Amazons.
A.P.
vii
1
FROM KNOSSOS TO HOMER
Bernard Dietrich
Soon after the decipherment of Linear B, similarities became apparent
between some metric phrases of the non-literary texts and Homeric
epic.1 It was argued that these represented remnants of Mycenaean
epic; but the theory found little favour at the time.2 Over forty years
later the subject has been revisited in the light of new evidence and
work. A plausible modern theory suggests that after the destruction of
the Bronze Age palaces, Aeolic poets of Boeotia and Thessaly pre-
served the memory of such epic traditions, which travelled to the Ionic
colonies in the East before their return and diffusion throughout the
Greek world.3 More recently Homeric language, characters and
themes have been traced back to Mycenaean via Aeolic and Ionic epic.4
It is an historically possible route, although the linguistic arguments
are not without difficulty.5
If such epic existed, as seems likely now, it should be looked for in
the oral poetic tradition. Over the centuries this absorbed foreign
influences, notably from the East, but nevertheless accurately remem-
bered the Aegean past. For example, a good many names of Homeric
heroes can be read on the tablets. As it is extremely unlikely that the
epic poet borrowed his characters from these palace inventories or the
scribes invented them, both must have drawn from an older Minoan
and Mycenaean source which was already familiar with the figures and
their myths.6 Other features that hark back to the Bronze Age include
Homeric perceptions of time, nature, narrative themes, all of which
offer interesting technical points of comparison between oral and
graphic composition.
Much work has been done recently in comparing epic formulaic
techniques with Minoan pictorial forms in wall painting and glyptic
art.7 Repetitive phrases and epithets in oral poetry recall fixed
compositional types of Minoan iconography in wall painting and espe-
cially on Middle and Late Bronze Age rings with a limited range of
designs, figural attitudes and iconographical symbols.8 Both Aegean
1
Bernard Dietrich
artist and epic poet worked with common themes: teichoscopy, lion
hunts, combinations of fighting and pastoral settings, landscapes and
the like. Placed side by side, such formulaic elements created continu-
ous narrative scenes, as in the miniature frescoes from the West House
on Thera.9
With the new palaces Minoans effectively introduced representa-
tional painting. In contrast with Egyptian convention, artists showed
nature as she appears to the eye.10 Narrative scenes in wall painting
and glyptic art could extend over several days of a religious festival, as
on the panels of the Hagia Triada sarcophagus.11 Occasionally one
design embraced generic aspects of life, such as the recurring cycle of
death and regeneration.12 Others again compressed a series of events
into one frame like the Toreador frescoes which show all stages of bull-
leaping in the same picture. Similarly single scenes may suggest both
divine arrival and departure,13 or a god’s approach from afar could be
frozen in perspective, whether or not he is seen by the human
worshippers.
Many cultic scenes incorporate a symbolic sign or icon which indi-
cates the type of ritual portrayed. Given the close affinity of Minoan
religion to fundamental aspects of nature cult, most will involve the
celebration of fertility and rebirth. And the most efficacious of these
rituals was the act of blood sacrifice which had as its primary aim the
release of the powers of renewal through the victim’s death.14 The
double axe served both as instrument of sacrifice and symbol of re-
newal through the act of slaughter. Another distinctive recurring sign
is that of the so-called impaled triangle which may be the dagger used
in sacrifice, unless it stands for a more obvious sign of female fertility.15
But its message of renewal is similar to that of the axe, and both icons
may in fact be shown between the horns of a bull’s head.16 On a ring
from Vapheio on the mainland the axe appears in an elaborate design
resembling a cultic knot and the Egyptian symbol of life, the ankh
sign.17 The double axe preserved some of its symbolic value in histori-
cal Greek tradition and evidently remained close to the heart of the
modern Cretan.18
Such symbols occur regularly on Minoan and Mycenaean rings on
their own or in combination with other signs. They indicate the gen-
eral nature of the cultic scene rather than a specific festival, location or
even necessarily a particular god. In function they resemble Homeric
epithets of individuals and formulaic phrases describing attributes of
cities or geographical locations. Homeric usage presents a mix of
specific and purely ornamental or generic epithets,19 some of which
2
From Knossos to Homer
may have changed from their first occurrence in Mycenaean.20 Fur-
thermore, specific epithets can of course be inappropriate to a particu-
lar occasion in which a hero becomes involved. Swift-footed Achilles
may be sitting in his tent playing the lyre while receiving guests.21 If
the comparison is sound, icons may have operated within an equally
wide range of usage, so that they can only loosely be used as guides to
particular scenes.
Other curious parallelisms between Homer and Minoan Crete may
offer more precise insights. One is the almost total silence regarding
temples in both worlds. Certainly neither poet nor Minoan/Mycenaean
art provides convincing evidence of separate temples in the city as
distinct from the palace along the oriental model. At present only a few
exceptions to the rule are known in Crete or the Cycladic islands.22
Nor is the concept of the temple as the naov" or home of a deity
documented before the Pylian calkivnao" in Linear B.23 Minoan and
Mycenaean sanctuaries tended to operate in larger connected com-
plexes usually in association with an open space. This is the character-
istic lay-out of the palace sanctuaries, or of the cult centre at Mycenae
and the structures on the lower acropolis of Tiryns on the mainland.24
In contrast with the contemporary picture in archaic Greece and the
growing number of new foundations from the eighth century BC,
temples in Homer are also few and far between, apart from two each
for Apollo and Athena as city deities.25 Equally rare in Homer is the
word naov" (Ion. nhov"), perhaps because his gods lived together on
Olympus and not in the houses of the city.26
A most interesting coincidence between Homer and the Minoan
world is the absence of cult statues. Votive gifts, including the sacrifi-
cial victim, are ajgavlmata intended to delight the gods and not repre-
sent or incorporate them.27 A signal exception appears to be a passage
in Book 6 of the Iliad. There Athena’s priestess Theano offered a
pevplo" to the goddess in her temple on the acropolis of Troy with the
prayer that she might break Diomede’s spear and take pity on the
Trojan wives.28 The goddess nodded her refusal to the request. The
idea of a moving statue seemed ridiculous and redundant to Arist-
archus who promptly athetised the line.29 A few believe that there was
a statue which came to life pygmalion-like and momentarily trans-
formed itself into the goddess herself.30 But it is open to doubt, I think,
whether the verb ajnevneue was meant literally. More likely the poet
vividly described Athena’s refusal which, as so often in Homer, did not
require an actual divine physical presence.
As a general rule Homer’s gods preferred to communicate indirectly
3
Bernard Dietrich
from afar.31 Their presence more often than not went unnoticed.32
They attended their sacrifice unseen.33 Exceptions to the rule occur as
a ‘utopian feature’ of the fairy tale. The Phaeacians and far-distant
Ethiopians were on familiar terms with the gods,34 unlike ordinary
mortals to whom they did not appear ejnargei'".35 The venerable Nestor
might be excused for boasting that he saw Athena at the feast which he
had prepared for Poseidon.36 But her actual appearance (fanei'sa) in
the shape of a large, beautiful woman to Odysseus alone and to his
dogs is unusual, indeed quite unlike her encounter with Achilles in
Il.1.194f.37 Yet such confrontations are imagined as possible in
Homer and cause little surprise to the human actors when they do
happen. This epic idea of feasible but unlikely divine epiphany contin-
ued in Greek literature and beyond. Its tenacious hold over popular
imagination may be judged from the ludicrous incident at Lystra,
which is told in the New Testament. The people there mistook St Paul
and his companion Barnabas for epiphanies of Olympian Zeus and
Hermes.38
Homeric values prescribed the standard for Greek vase painters in
the black-figure style of the sixth century and in the following red-
figure technique from the end of that century. The gods clearly pre-
ferred their own company.39 Precisely the same kind of remote, prima-
rily invisible, engagement in human affairs obtained in archaic and
classical Greek temple sculpture. Gods acted out their myths among
themselves on their own level. When shown together with men, they
intervene or rather control human affairs unseen.
Both Apollo and Zeus on the pediments of Zeus’ temple at Olympia
illustrate Homeric concepts of divine functioning. The commanding
central figure of Apollo with right arm outstretched in the west pedi-
ment frontally addresses the outside observer but remains invisible to
the fighting Lapiths and Centaurs in the scene. The sculpture lies
between archaic and classical, but the content is expressed in Homeric
terms except of course that the poet’s audience hears rather than sees
what is going on. Divine parousiva is ubiquitous in the poems and
intervention continuous, but it normally occurs in the form of mental
rather than direct visual interaction. That explains the ‘remarkable
paradox that nearly every important event in the Iliad is the doing of a
god, and that one can give a clear account of the poem’s entire action
with no reference to the gods at all.’40
The gods are strong, beautiful, fast like thought,41 and they cast
about them the radiance of light.42 But they are measured by human
standards, albeit on an exaggerated scale.43 Ajax surmises a divine
4
From Knossos to Homer
presence by the size of the shins and footprints that he can see.44 These
different views of divine functioning combine to confuse the poet’s
vision of epiphany. The gods’ anthropomorphism conflicts with the
perception of their supernatural powers. Athena is pictured as a swal-
low up in the rafters of Odysseus’ hall,45 yet some fifty lines on she
brandishes her dread aegis (1.297). Apollo’s image at the beginning of
the Iliad varies between the anthropomorphic god and a malignant
divine power. At one moment he is striding down Mount Olympus
with his quiver and arrows ringing on his shoulders, and the next he is
an evil plague descending like night on the Achaean army. Thetis, too,
changes from swirling sea mist into a human figure when she appears
before her son Achilles later in the same Book.46 What then are we to
make of the talking Scamander, both deep-eddying river (baqudivnh")
and speaking to Achilles in a human voice?47
Such episodes have fostered an extreme view of Homer’s gods as
creations of epic convention and outside religion.48 That judgement
fails to take into account the long history and nature of epic religion
and its enormous contribution to polis cult.49 The functioning of Hom-
er’s gods followed traditions from the pre-archaic past, creating a
chronologically unreal element in Homeric theology. In Homer the
gods interact directly with his heroes; divine and human motivations
overlap or coincide.50 The two can be difficult to separate in an illusory
epic world hovering between real and seeming. Apollo sends a false
image, an ei[dwlon which looks like Aeneas, weapons and all, for the
Achaeans to fight over.51 Once he substitutes himself for the Trojan
Agenor whom he saves from Achilles’ fury.52 He resembles the hero
(ejoikwv") and therefore seems the same as Aeneas’ ei[dwlon in Book 5.53
Metaphor and simile merge in this and in other divine interventions.
Socrates disapproved of Homeric thinking and commented critically
on divine metamorphosis into human and animal shape in Homer and
the poets. Perfect beings, he said, could only change into something
less; and he therefore blamed these gods for changing their forms, or
at least making us believe that they do.54
Friedrich Matz argued that in the Theano episode of Iliad 6 the
statue becomes the goddess.55 That cannot be right; but he touches on
the essence of Homeric fluidity between mentally comprehended (or
narrated) and actually seen intervention, that is, between divine action
and epiphany. It is difficult to judge how important the distinction
would have appeared to Homer’s contemporaries who may have felt
less perturbed by the vague boundaries between man, animal, plants
and even lifeless objects. The proximity of all parts of nature emerges
5